I run, in
large part, alone
.
I enjoy going
when and where I want, setting my own pace, and choosing the distance.
Now and
then, however, I encounter a runner who is good to lope 16 miles at cruising
speed or to take on a backwoods scramble in the hills. To encounter such a
runner is to find a fellow pilgrim. We can go on for miles, spending what
breath we have left in our lungs describing our quests for the perfect stride,
the exaltation of a strong race finish, the transcendent bliss of an empty road
where mind merges with breath and footfall. These are the parts of distance
running that seem indelible, difficult to convey to someone from outside the
clan, yet joyous to share with one who understands.
I recently felt
this kind of connection when I read Haruki Murakami’s 2009 memoir, What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami, well-known for his fiction
books, bridges his decades of distance running with his development as a
writer. These two passions, seemingly disparate, benefit from qualities such as
determination, and dedicated work. Both require a noise filter, minds focused,
shields up against distraction.
Murakami
left college as a workaholic, non-runner, non-writer, and smoker, one who
pulled long hours in the jazz club he owned in Tokyo. He wrote a novel at 30
(more or less for the hell of it, by his description), which opened a door to a
fiction-writing career. Soon after, Murakami left the club, took up running to
improve his health, and began writing full time, while shuttling between Japan,
Hawaii, and Boston. In running, he found far more than a fitness hobby. It
helped him to quiet his mind and carry the psychological burdens of writing.
The body, he found, was also an excellent vessel for inspiration. Sometimes
this inspiration comes through pain.
In the 1980s,
Murakami received a magazine assignment to write about the world’s first marathon.
To do justice to the subject, he decided to run the course himself. It would be
his first time he had run that distance. To compound the challenge, the course,
laid out between the Greek cities of Athens and Marathon, followed dangerously overcrowded
roads. Summer was in full swing. He would run his first marathon solo and under
a punishing Mediterranean sun.
The
photographer working with Murakami offered to let him cheat by riding in his
van. They’d get out for pictures at select points along the course. The
photographer revealed that he had already performed this service for some
previous writers. Murakami wouldn’t have it.
“Sometimes
the world baffles me,” Murakami writes. “I can’t believe people would actually
do that.”
This was
where Murakami won me over. My respect increased as I read how he sweated
though the scorching miles, weaving past double-parked cars, and avoiding a
disturbing number of road-killed dogs and cats, before arriving at the finish. Because
he endured this feast of pain, Murakami’s account is far more interesting and
truer, compared to what he could have written from a passenger seat perspective.
“I’m not the
brightest person,” Murakami writes. “Only when I’m given an actual physical
burden and my muscles start to groan (and sometimes scream) does my
comprehension meter shoot upward and I’m finally able to grasp something.”
It is obvious
to see how going on a long run can help a writer describe what running is like,
but it can also help to structure thoughts. I can attest that many of my ideas arise
during the relaxation of a morning run, and other runners will say the same.
Research
continues to illustrate the fact that consciousness is not purely cerebral, no
ghost in the machine, but a chorus of conversations between our brains and
everything outside. I have seen this is in the way students’ thinking changes
when they have to stand up to look at a question or move around a classroom to
gather information from peers. Many teachers are now finding ways to
incorporate body movement to supplement mental work. The mind is further
connected to the body based on bodily sensations such as calm, anxiety, comfort,
and pain.
Marukami’s
running taught him to reverse the mind-body connection, using thought to
regulate sensations. When he accepted that pain was inevitable on his long
runs, he found that he could choose whether or not he was suffering.
The long
periods that writers spend sitting in chairs, wrestling with language and their
own thoughts offer plenty of suffering potential. There’s the isolation that
concentration often requires. The fruit of lonely labor shrivels all too easily,
goes to vinegar instead of wine. Those who confront this alienation, the
specter of pointless toil, may be tempted to reach for the wine themselves--or
something stronger. The writer-as-substance-abuser archetype, familiar to
Americans, is also common in Japan, where Murakami describes how surprised people
are when they discover that he isn’t destroying his body to write books. The
stresses of writing and handling difficult themes can be like handling poison,
Murakami writes. Running, however provides an exit for toxic thoughts.
“I run in a
void.” Murakami writes. “Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order
to acquire a void.”
The void,
for me, is never a truly empty mind, but it often means a quieter one. On my
best runs and races, I’ve shushed the little complaints from the body and put
distance between myself and the chorus of doubts. I often find that the demons in
the chorus are loudest during the first miles; keep running and they fall
behind. Then I’m free. In this quieter realm, sometimes I hear unexpected
voices and inspirations.
So it is
with my best days of writing. The little doubt demons yowl loudest in the
beginning. I need to warm up, to get absorbed with what I’m doing until I
scarcely care whether my work is a success or a failure. Only then can I leave
the demons behind and focus on the task.
Murakami
advocates for four hours of writing daily. This level of commitment to routine
mental exercise may be more difficult than you first conceive, especially when
combined with other tasks that Murakami accounts for, such as promoting books,
translating, and preparing speeches and lectures. If you, like me, love the
idea of writing, but struggle to enforce a routine, Murakami suggests building
up to it with smaller goals at first, much like a marathoner who boosts weekly
mileage leading up to the race.
Without good
habits, Murakami says, talent can easily become a crutch. He has always been a
solid, middle-of-the-pack runner, one who must work against his body’s natural
tendency to put on weight. Yet rather than resent the effortless natural gifts
that other runners enjoy, he considers it a virtue that he has to put effort
into his practice. Murakami sees his writing the same way; he has talents, but the
work is never easy.
“I have to
pound the rock with a chisel and dig out of a deep hole before I can locate the
source of creativity,” he writes. Writers with the greatest talent, are
enviable, but those who rely on talent alone will be bereft of other skills
needed to keep working should the creative well run dry.
Murakami’s
writing discipline shows through in his tidy, simple sentences. The prose has a
Mr. Rogers quality, wrapping sophisticated ideas in neat packages. The style
echoes that of American author Raymond Carver, which makes sense, because the book
title is an homage to Carver’s short story/story collection, What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love. Murakami has also translated Carver’s work
from English into Japanese.
Such simple-to-read
writing often conceals the difficult tasks involved in snaking a one-dimensional
string of words through any number of intersections and decision points. The
challenge is like designing a racecourse through a busy city or byzantine
network of trails. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running provides a
clear, well-marked course with stimulating views along the way. Marukami’s insights
are something to run with.
